You’ve been this mad. You know you have.
Happy Killdozer Day, everyone! On this day in 2004, Marvin John Heemeyer climbed into his modified bulldozer and damaged or destroyed a big chunk of Granby, Colorado – including the town hall, the former mayor’s house, his own business and a dozen more buildings. Two hours later, when he got his ‘dozer stuck in the basement of a hardware store, he shot himself.
Backstory. The city insisted he paid $80,000 he didn’t have to hook his muffler shop up to city sewage, and then repeatedly fined him for improperly dumping sewage – among other ways they were dicking him around. The combination of being injured and helpless to do anything about it is a perfect rage inducer, but few people have the sticktuitiveness of Heemeyer.
He took an ordinary bulldozer and spent a year and a half armoring up. Slabs of cement, up to a foot thick, sandwiched between two layers of tool steel covered the cab and vulnerable parts of the treads. For visibility, he had several video cameras feeding two monitors in the cockpit. These were protected by shields of bulletproof lexan three inches thick. He even rigged compressed air nozzles to blow dust off the camera ports. He had gun ports around, too, but I don’t think he used them.
Local and state police followed Heemeyer around shooting at him and what they hoped were vulnerable points. The ‘dozer took 200 rounds, a flash-bang to the exhaust and several other explosions (grenades?), but nothing even slowed him down. The governor was considering bringing in the National Guard to use anti-tank missiles when the whole thing came to an end.
Nobody was hurt (except Heemeyer, of course). It was a thing. A very thing. Good weekend, everyone!
p.s. Oh, gosh – I forgot to link to the footage!
Posted: June 4th, 2021 under history, holidays.
Comments: 15
Comments
Comment from QuasiModo
Time: June 4, 2021, 11:48 pm
Should have radio controlled it and lived to fight another day :+)
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: June 5, 2021, 12:07 am
🎶
But I’m telling you today,
That it ain’t the only way,
And there’s shit you won’t be eating anymore–
They’ve been paying you to love it,
But the time has come to shove it,
And it isn’t a resistance, it’s a war.🎶
Thomas Pynchon
From Gravity’s Rainbow
Comment from durnedyankee
Time: June 5, 2021, 12:24 am
We drove through miles and miles of Bloomberg’s “it’s not hard to be a farmer” areas today. Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri.
Bloomberg, an alleged genius unable to think outside of his own little box.
It’s beautiful and inspiring and I was entertained by the notion of educated elitist asshats from urban Bidenia thinking they can get by without it.
Oh and thanks to Zhoe Bi-Den and Kampala Harass (spell check got it right!) for reminding us how much we like paying $3.50/gallon for regular unleaded and how much we miss the good old days of President Barry OBigears.
Comment from Mushdogs
Time: June 5, 2021, 1:59 am
He used the ports. He had a .50 BMG rifle out the tail end trying to set off propane tanks with incendiary rounds. You can see them splattering against the ripper on the tail of the dozer in footage of the rampage. Design flaw in an otherwise mostly well thought out plan.
Comment from JC Collins
Time: June 5, 2021, 2:48 am
And Ned Kelly looked down from heaven and smiled. ‘That’s my boy!’
Comment from durnedyankee
Time: June 5, 2021, 11:16 am
His turret reminds me of the Jagdtiger, Brumbar or Elefant.
I wonder if gasoline soaked blankets over the air intakes would have worked. Course getting them ON the intakes would have taken some doing, and a couple heroic Hungarian freedom fighters.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_at_Andau
Comment from BJM
Time: June 5, 2021, 6:07 pm
It never occurs to the leftards why mass shootings have increased. Sure some shooters are bat-shit crazy, and/or fame-seeking wannabees, but most have some sort of unresolved grudge, often with govt/authority.
They blame guns and try to apply the govt boot to everyone’s neck…which of course creates the next shooter.
Comment from BJM
Time: June 5, 2021, 6:44 pm
I meant to post this Monday…this is what the left doesn’t get, they’ve been gaslighted into believing the flag is a jingoistic symbol of oppression and colonialism.
The presentation is not 100% historically accurate but it does explain to those who are ignorant as to why it was important to raise the flag in the 9/11 wreckage…it says we will persevere…much like Churchill’s “We will fight on the beaches” speech.
Mr. H grovels guiltily a bit too much in the beginning, but his heart is in the right place and all vloggers must keep an eye out for the demonetization hammer and cancel mob.
He also has a video on the Tomb of the Unknown that is worth watching.
Comment from durnedyankee
Time: June 6, 2021, 1:34 pm
@BJM – considering today is the D-Day anniversary, your comment still works nicely.
Comment from BJM
Time: June 6, 2021, 5:57 pm
@Durned…yep Dad was racing across France with Old Blood & Guts and I was preparing to make my debut.
Comment from durnedyankee
Time: June 6, 2021, 7:02 pm
Heh – Mine was, according to him, acting as a 6’4″ grey eyed spy in Tokyo, rather than agreeing with the records which place his ship fleet refueling someplace in the Pacific.
and I was but gleam #5 in his eye.
Comment from Pupster
Time: June 6, 2021, 8:21 pm
Kind of makes me wonder what the backstory of the city fuckery was about. Someone wanted his lot? Poor installation of an exhaust system on the mayor’s wife’s car? Excellent pipe laying to the mayor’s wife?
And any rate, a bulldozer and all those materials and supplies must have cost a lot of money, though I suppose it was better spent destroying the town than paying the city.
Comment from Pupster
Time: June 6, 2021, 8:58 pm
OOooooh, there is a documentary on yoo tuube. He left behind a cassette tape recording. “Tread”
Comment from Joe A
Time: June 7, 2021, 4:47 am
I can certainly empathize. Being forced to cough up $80K you don’t have to keep your business afloat could set Mary Poppins to loading mags and looking for the nearest bell tower.
But… if you need to come up with 80 large and you happen to have a Komatsu D355 in good nick, enough AR500 and welding rod to armor plate it – not to mention enough .50 BMG rounds (even at the time of the rampage, several dollars a pop) to turn Granby Lake into swiss cheese, it seems like there might possibly have been a way to solve the problem that didn’t involve suck starting a .357.
Comment from durnedyankee
Time: June 7, 2021, 1:14 pm
He was doing “gain of function” work on his bulldozer, and it escaped from the lab.
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